Posted
by
CowboyNealon Friday January 21, 2005 @12:41AM
from the kill-the-head-and-the-body-yet-lives dept.

Ensign Nemo writes "Software patents in Europe still being pushed.
They're at it again and they're not waisting any time. Even though opposition is there the backers of software patents are getting sneakier and sneakier." Poland, if you help us out again, I pledge to never, ever forget you.

Hmm. Guess we'll have to wait until next Monday for more definate information. From TFA:

That the matter would be settled for good next Monday, Luxembourgs Economics Minister Jeannot Krecke for one announced at a meeting of the European Parliament's Legal Committee this Wednesday.

Hmm.. Guess we'll get yet ANOTHER Slashdot story on Monday - if Ms. Krecke is correct in her prediction. Oh well, this is a matter of importance and I suppose as many news stories/comments as we can read, the better informed we'll all be on the subject!

This reminds me, next month is FOSDEM (Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting) in Brussels: http://www.fosdem.org [fosdem.org].
I suggest we raid the EU headquarters and talk some sense into the EU ministers.

of course they're not dead. software patents benefit the corporations that control the governments, so they will eventually be installed in all countries. you'd think people would get the message from the backdoor process that was used to almost install them on eu countries this time. don't count on stopping it again.

"....the Ministers of Agriculture in their meeting of the EU Council of Agriculture and Fisheries on Monday are to give the nod to the controversial position of the EU Council of Ministers on the Directive on the Patentability of "computer-implemented inventions"".

Isn't that a bit like asking the Minister of Defence if they think the tax system should be revised? Or asking the Minister for Education what his thoughts are on creating a new highway?

I'm beginning to see why so many Europeans don't take the EU seriously.

Yes, it is sort of like that. I do believe that it is illegal for them to do it (correct me if I'm wrong).

And many Europeans are always pissed on the Council and their undemocratic methods (they are not directly elected, but they have lawmaking power).

The thing is that ppl are complaining on the Council and the lack of democracy in the EU and at the same time, the same ppl are crying out loud on every attempt to move power from the Council to the Parlament (they are basically afraid of the superstate of E

This is, as far as I know, pretty much the same as when other, sometimes totally unrelated, decisions are piggybacked onto a bill that is to be aproved by congress. I.e. a small decission that has been agreed upon and passed on just to expediate the process.

In the EU council this procedure seems to be called A-list agendas. Things on the A-list agenda is supposed to be agreed upon beforehand and should be possible to go to vote on without any discussion.

Supporting Open Source software by not introducing software patents is the best thing we can do for our trade balance. By using more and more Open Source instead of paying overseas countries for commodity software like Operating Systems and Office suites the more likely it is that Europes own software packages sell more than we import from Oracle, Microsoft, Adobe etc.

That is a solid argument for the MEPs. Something they can understand.

Im all for copyright legislation because it protects Open Source aswell as commercial endeavours - that is very important, but patents on software algorithm and ideas should not be possible, next thing you know someone is patenting pi - or atleast the first five decimals:).

The MEPs are against software patents in the majority. They actually started listening after all their constituants wrote to them and told them how bad software patents would be.

The vote went against patents in the European Parliament but despite that, thanks to ample pressure from big, largely US based, business interests, the European council of ministers seems determined to force the legislation through.

This is one of the reasons that it's actually had some level of mainstream media coverage, because i

On the 13th Jan, I received the following (extract) from the UK Labour Party group of MEPs:

"The Labour MEPs' position is reflected in the amendments we tabled and voted for in the Parliament's report on the Commission proposal on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions. In short, the position remains:

. No US-style patenting of software.
. Software as such, must not be patented. No patenting of business methods or "general ideas"
. Opensource software must be allowed to flourish and the Commission must ensure that this Directive does not have any adverse effect on opensource software and small software developers.
. Patents and the threat of litigation must not be used as an anti-competitive weapon to squeeze out small companies."

I'm not sure what they intend to do about this latest news. Email/snailmail all takes so-o-o-o long and I wonder whether it's just assistants sending stock replies...

In Germany there is a huge majority in the parliament (with supporters from EVERY party) that is AGAINST software patents.
Sadly, the parliaments "delegate" to this EU meeting (Federal Minister of Agriculture) Renate Künast has gone into a "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" mode, so demands that she stands up against the EU directive will probably fall on deaf ears.

This so-called 'A-item' should not have been put before the committe in the first place as it disregards the rules for placing these items. The (unelected, govt. appointed) EU Commission (as usual) is simply making up its own rules as it goes along.

With this sort of arrogant crap we constantly suffer from the Commission, is it any wonder that even if this item is thrown out, we still might not win. The European Patent Office can still do its own thing. Don't believe me? The EPO is not bound by many of the laws or regulations that most of the citizens of Europe take for granted, such as the European Convention on Human Rights.

Some examples:
. The Employment Law offers the staff extremely limited protection. Staff can be dismissed almost at will by the President and have no claims to unemployment pay or other social security payments
. Basic legal rights are ignored. The President is the ultimate ruler of the EPO. He is judge, jury and executioner. His decisions on matters within the office are final. Any decision made by the President can be enacted immediately. There is no "stay of execution" pending the outcome of appeal hearings. Sanctions are arbitrary and harsh.
. Even criminal law is disregarded: In 1995 the then President of the EPO physically attacked and injured a staff member, the Administrative Council of the EPO subsequently refusing to lift the immunity of the President.

Try to catch the BBC Radio 4 programme in business [bbc.co.uk] this week (warning the schedule info is correct but the content is still on last week's programme). I expected this to be just the normal corporate b/s, but it was in fact more interested in problems in the USA, particularly in patent examination. There are representatives on both sides of the argument, but I would have the "say no to patent expansion" side winning. There is a repeat on Sunday evening 21:30GMT. I don't know if the "listen again" has moved to the current edition yet - as I say, the web site is stuck on last week.

The EPO is stating that: A computer program can be patented as such, if it has a "further technical effect". But practically any solution to a computing problem constitutes a "further technical effect".

The EPO further declares that the "arrangement or manner of representation", may as well constitute a patentable technical feature. And examples which are given include pulse code modulation or a measuring instrument which produces a particular form of graph for representing the measured information and a computer data structure. This means that according to the EPO's guidelines, the order of information in a data structure could be patented if accessing the data structure is claimed. Yes!! I claim Name and Address (and Address and Name, to be on the safe side)!

As the FFI points out:

The most frequently used rhetorical trick of the Council paper works as follows: [A] is not patentable, unless [condition B] is met. But, upon close scrutiny, it turns out that condition B is always met.

It gets worse.

The wording "normal physical interaction between a program and the computer" means about as much as "normal physical interaction between a recipe and the cook", that is: nothing. It is a magic formula whose usage can be inferred only from recent decisions of the EPO, in which it served to justify the granting of patents on geometrical calculation rules to IBM. In the present case, according to the EPO, the "further technical effect beyond..." consisted in the economisation of space on a computer screen. Wow! Novel or what?

Software shouldn't be patented. It shouldn't even be copyrighted or trademarked. There is such a short shelf life on software and software companies that the impact of denying access to techniques and logarithms effectively shuts out competition and fair use not only for the life of a product but well beyond, negatively influencing people well beyond the useful scope of any novelty that could possibly be discovered.

One only has to look at the rampant achievements and success of Free Software and Open So

Open source software, and free software *depend* on copyright. Yes, depend on it. Without copyright, then anyone could take the code, including large corporations, and modify it for their own interest, and sell it without releasing the source code. Basically, it'd defeat the point of the difference between "free", and "Free".

Software shouldn't be *patented* because you're patenting an algorithm. And computer code is a completely logical process. It'd be very similar to patenting a mathematical formula. They're both *discovered*, not really *created*. It also creates a lot of problems in enforceability, and in large corporations being able to sue anyone they please. It's not only logically wrong, but also effectively wrong. It's similar, in a way, to the DMCA in that it gives bigger corporations the power to control everyone.

Very very few people argue against copyright when it comes to software. Free software people/open source people argue against patents alone.

oh, and trademark has nothing to do with the issue. Don't lump the three under the whole "intellectual property" umbrella. You'll almost always be wrong when you do. They have very little to do with each other.

There are some materials that 5-10 years is too short for copyright period: books,

Even this case is debatable, considering that many books go "out of print" within less than this time. Most books (,movies and music) make most of their sales within a fairly short time of their publication. One one thing which does tend to boost sales of old books is if the same author has published a new book. There's also a more fundermental issue of how much copyright, especially very long copyright, acts as an incentiv

Corporate copyrights are generally shorter than individual copyrights. Invidual copyrights are the authors life + 70 years. Corporate copyrights are 90 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever expires first.

"Open source software, and free software *depend* on copyright. Yes, depend on it. Without copyright, then anyone could take the code, including large corporations, and modify it for their own interest, and sell it without releasing the source code. Basically, it'd defeat the point of the difference between "free", and "Free"."

RMS invented the GPL to hack the copyright. If copyrights were to be abolished RMS would be dancing in the streets.

Without copyright, then anyone could take the code, including large corporations, and modify it for their own interest, and sell it without releasing the source code. Basically, it'd defeat the point of the difference between "free", and "Free".

Similarly, anyone could take the binaries this company would be selling and redistribute at will. They'd have the privilege of developing their version without anyone helping, of course but no exclusive distribution rights which might make selling proprietary so

Very very few people argue against copyright when it comes to software.

Which makes the constant stream of slashdot posters arguing against copyright for music, films, etc all the more gauling and hypocritical. Why should the result of my efforts be afforded special protection just because they happen to be code, rather than music?

Pantents exist to encourage innovation by making research that wouldn't be profitable otherwise possible. Do software patents encourage innovation? Will software patents give us more software related inventions? I haven't seen any studies that indicate that. I have however seen studies that suggest the contrary, that software patents in fact inhibit research (e.g. these [researchoninnovation.org] two [dbresearch.com]).

So, tell me again why we should introduce this costly, bureaucratic
and monopolistic process. Exactly how will it benifit the citizens of
the EU? Will it give us new, innovative software? Will it give us more jobs (apart from all the patent lawyers, that is)?

I'm sorry, but I believe you're confusing Europe with the US. Europe did find against Microsoft, and is only discussing software patents now because they already rejected the proposal the first time around.

Europe as a whole certainly has its flaws, but its government being absurdly pro-corporation is not normally one of them.

EU is not for the benefit of citizens, but for the benefit of corporations.

EU is not for the benefit of corporations. EU allows for trade and business between and outside of member states. A cattle rancher in the UK could be hurt or assisted by trade regulation enforced by the EU with the United States. That cattle rancher is not a corporation, but an individual doing business within trade laws enforced by the EU that his/her country is a member there of.

This is not an argument against anything. Everything machine is reducible to software, and every software is reducible to machine. It is a distinction without a difference. To reuse my example above, chemical process patents are not generally considered controversial here, yet every argument against software patents can be used against them because they are the exact same kind of thing.

I guess this is one major difference that sets software apart from everything else: R&D cost. As far as I know, R

you do need to patent chemical processes, machines etc, because they are not covered by copyright. Software, on the other hand is already protected by copyright, and copyright is a much fairer way of protecting creativity as you have it automatically, whereas you must spend a lot of money and time to get (and defend) a patent.

Newsflash: ALL patents are algorithms. Stop acting like this unique to computers. Chemical process patents, for example, are structurally and functionally indistinguishable and very obviously map into the same space as "software algorithms" and yet those are not considered controversial.

They're quite distinguishable. Suppose you have a patent on adding element A to B, wait a while and element C. Now suppose you have a patent on the software-implemented algorithm to add "A" and "B", wait a while and add

There are software ideas that are unique enough to support a patent. The problem is that every software idea ends up being patented, unique or not.

This effectively makes it very hard for small and independent software developers to exist as they don't have the money to get a patent. Don't have the money to protect against lawsuits for unjustified patents (it takes a lot of money to get a patent overturned). And finally, if they some way get a patent, they can't afford to protect it.

As an example there is a patent on using pointer exchange to swap two large data structures instead of swapping each member of the two structures. The patent applies to any software that is implementing a CPU emulation. So a very old technique is patented because nobody has documented that it has been used in a CPU emulator, even though it is just the same as any other case.

This is the problem, software is easy. It is trivially easy such that a teenager can master the most advanced of techniques. The only

Patents which are too ambiguous and too general, those having no real use to an overall industry or those too similar to existing patents or existing work, should not be condoned. Companies should not even bother---it makes them seem disrespectful to the industry.

In perfect world this wouldn't happen and therefore software patents should be possible. But in the real world, where companies try to patent anything that they can, patent offices are not able to investigate wich patents are too general to be allowed. This is why you get patens for one-click, double-click, scrollbar...

Other industries have existed long before patenting and on those industries most of the common tools and technigues have been availeble for everybody to innovate. When it has gotten more complex, then came the patents. But with more complex structures you need more R&D or something really innovative to prevent anybody else of doing something basic stuff.

software industry is just too young and evolving to be limited with patents.

Not being allowed to exactly duplicate someone else's work will encourage people to try alternate solutions, or experiment with variables.

Or just forget their ideas, because they have not enough resources to find out what parts of their innovation has been already been patented. Why risking everything, when you can join the big company and work there as they have allways done.

Ah, yes, the old "don't let them look up logarithms in a table" trick.

But it's true! Your used to be allowed to request a copy of Eton tables in math exams, and be provided with one. The last time I asked a proctor for a copy they just looked at me completely blankly as if they'd never heard of it.

Copyright and patents were intended to encourage people to make stuff that otherwise wouldn't be done. When people and organizations are willing to create an entire operating system and a collection of thousands of programs (GNU/Linux and the thousands of associated programs), the basic premise of copyright and patents is nullified.

If people will create without incentive, there is no reason to impose needless costs on both consumers and creators by strangling the public domain with laws like copyright. If Microsoft refuses to develop Windows because it no longer has any copyrights, then Linux is there as a replacement, and it will become 10x what Windows ever was or Linux is today once it becomes unshackled from copyright and patent issues and has the customer base of MS Windows today.

And that is assuming that no grants are given to fund open source development. The Chinese government, among others, has shown that they are willing to fund open source work. A small amount of federal funds would replace a massive amount spent in retail software licenses.

Some would say that the incentive is in seeing others improve upon your work and give those improvements back to the community; enforcement of this relies on copright law.

If Microsoft refuses to develop Windows because it no longer has any copyrights, then Linux is there as a replacement, and it will become 10x what Windows ever was or Linux is today once it becomes unshackled from copyright and patent issues and has the customer base of MS Windows today.

I'm a creator, but I'm concerned that operating in a legal minefield of vague, overlapping and bogus patents will destroy my ability to make money.

Copyrights are a reasonable match for software, and that's all the protection it needs. Software is too maleable to support well-defined patent claims. Software doesn't need copyrights and patents. Other kinds of products don't get double IP coverage; why should software?

I'd rather take my chances that some someone duplicates the functionality of my products and competes in the marketplace than risk having some jackass submarine patent-holder pop out of the woodwork demanding cash out of my bank account.

"Not true. There are patents applicable to software going back for decades. It became evident many years ago that the line dividing software and hardware was practically non-existent, but it seems many slashdotters will never catch up to that simple truth for at least another decade."

Unlike IBM perhaps?:

Cooley takes pains to praise the Gentleman-Sande paper, as well as an earlier paper by Sande (who was a student of Tukey's) that was never published. In fact, Cooley says, the Cooley-Tukey algorithm could

Do you have more information on that? I never heard of it before. I dug around Google a bit, but can't find any quality information on it.

In particular, was it ever upheld by any court? And if so how high did it go? Just because the patent office issued a patent doesn't make it legally valid (not to mention whether it is rationally valid chuckle). As far as I'm aware the patent office issued a number of early software patents and the courts struck

Also google for the words "Goetz" "Autoflow" "IBM". The Goetz/IBM story is full of hindsightful ironies - who would've guessed that IBM were the original "free" software advocates and anti-software patent activists;-)

I don't think there's all that much around on the 'net on this subject and I certainly don't know about court case specifics but I'd very much like to get a deeper insight into IBM's early anti-swpat policy myself.

Yes - but if no-one else turns up anything, the reason I gave you that link and left you to google for others is because those 30 boxes and many other documents in the University of Minnesota CBI collections would be a good place to look for this kind of historical stuff - stuff which isn't really ever likely to appear on a website. BTW - look what they use to navigate their dictionary pages! [umn.edu]

I don't live anywhere near Minnesota and maybe you don't either but if I did, I'd certainly be sticking my nose int

>So the state of the art became the state of the art in the entire absence of software patents and in the non-enforcment of software patents.

Not true. There are patents applicable to software going back for decades.

Absolutely true, and I go into it in more detail in this post. [slashdot.org] Software patents were consistantly and properly thrown out until the 80's. They were only issued in signifigant numbers in the 90's. And not they are rarely enforced, and even when someone attempts to enforce one it is still to

If you create something really novel, even if it is in software, why *shouldn't* you be able to get a patent on it?

12:02 Restate my assumptions:
1. Mathematics is the language of nature.
2. Principals and ideas in mathematics are universal truths; hence they are discovered, not created.
3. Computer science is the straight forward application of discreet mathematics. Thus ideas and algorithms written in computers are not patentable.

Your second point is irrelevent. According to the Constitution copyrights and patents apply to the "respective writings *and discoveries*" of the person in question. Notice that nothing is said about having to create something new; you only have to discover it.

Software patents create a disincentive for people to engage in economic activity by removing the possibility of generating a return on an investment.

One single piece of software can easily infringe on tens or hundreds of so-called 'software patents'. Each of those patent holders can do anything from taking the entire profit to denying the distribution of said software completely.

So, how would you feel about writing some new software you wanted to sell when you know that someone

If you create something really novel, even if it is in software, why *shouldn't* you be able to get a patent on it?

The motivation behind patents is not to reward people who innovate for the sake of patting them on the back, but to provide insentive for them to begin innovating in the first place, with the hopes that society will benefit from their creation after a small time period.

The reasoning behind patents is dubious in general - it presupposes that there would be less innovation were they not to exist (or even to exist in a more limited form). If history has taught us anything, it is that greed always finds a way to mask its ugly head and I'm sure that businesses would find a way to profit from their inventions even were patents not to exist. Being the first to market (and the name recognition that goes along with it) can be a very powerful ally indeed.

Secondly, it is not clear that the current time period for software patent expiration is anywhere near reasonable. In the fast-changing world of computers and information technology, even a year can be a long enough time period for software to become obsolete. How long do software patents last? 10 years? 17 years?

Then look at the patents that companies try to secure - one click ordering via amazon.com? If the patent on one-click ordering were even remotely influential on the companies decision to implement that feature, then I could perhaps see that a software patent may be useful in achieving its dubious purpose. But in this case, it is the ease of ordering - the desire to improve the customer's experience - from which the implementation gains its lure.

The above question strikes me as no more grounded than when a five year old gets into a fight with his sibling and says "stop copying me!". One person's being the first to have a particular idea does not in anyway entail his or her posession of that idea. So with this in mind, the question is: "If you create something really novel, even if it is in software, why *SHOULD* you be able to get a patent on it?"

Being the first to market (and the name recognition that goes along with it) can be a very powerful ally indeed.

To be fair, this was potentially something that patents were about: If a small company or lone inventor comes up with a stunning new product they potentially don't have the capital to get it to market. To get the capital they need to shop the invention around venture capitalists. Once they've made the idea somewhat public (in the shopping around phase) a large company with lots of resources could easily duplicate, produce, and market said invention before the inventor can manage to raise the capital and get production underway. In principal the patent would help alleviate this because the invention could be openly published, but there would still be a window of time for the inventor to raise funds and get his product to market before anyone else was allowed to join in.

Of course in this day and age of NDAs for everything, and the rate at which new products (particularly software) can be brought to market, this sort of concept just doesn't carry as much weight as it use to.

If a small company or lone inventor comes up with a stunning new product they potentially don't have the capital to get it to market. To get the capital they need to shop the invention around venture capitalists. Once they've made the idea somewhat public (in the shopping around phase) a large company with lots of resources could easily duplicate, produce, and market said invention before the inventor can manage to raise the capital and get production underway. In principal the patent would help alleviate t

The other reason behind patenting was so that the public could have a full and complete record of the invention that was patented, and so the public would be in a good position to take full advantage of the invention when it fell into the public domain. If you ever needed to know how something worked, you could just go the patent office. This made a lot of sense when people were patenting guns made from exchangable parts or new suspension types on horse drawn carriages, but is less useful these days when

A sibling post mentions the desire to have a "full and complete record" to allow the public to exploit inventions after they fall out of patent. This is true. Allow me to take a different tack and see if it helps explain things.

You do not have to patent an invention.

Let me stress that again: you do not have to patent an invention.

A patent is a disclosure of your invention and a description of its functioning, sufficient to make a working implementation - given the proper tools. If you give this out th

If you don't want someone to know how you did something, close the source. If someone comes around 2 weeks later and duplicates your work.. well it wasn't really novel was it?

I've come up with many algorithms in the past that I've thought were novel... then found out someone thought of it and gave it a fancy name 50 years ago. I could have got a patent on it if I'd wanted - but I wouldn't have deserved it. I'm just not *that* good.

I really think you're under the same delusion as a large number of people in the software industry in that you think compiling software somehow magically encrypts it so people can't possibly know how it works. If you come up with some brilliant algorithm and your business hinges on you maintaining control of this algorithm, giving an implementation of it to your customers, even if in binary form, will be the end of you. Your competitors will reverse engineer your software and provide an implementation of

In that kind of environment there's no more incentive to create a better algorithm than there is to create a crappy algorithm. Say you spend $x to create a new fast algorithm. Now say there are n people who want a product based on this algorithm. You're going to have to charge at least $x/n to each person to cover your costs. Now say after selling your product to s people a competitor enters the market by reverse engineering your product, in the process spending some $y. They can now sell their product

If you create something really novel, even if it is in software, why *shouldn't* you be able to get a patent on it?

The purpose of patents is to allow the patent holder a limited monopoly on the invention while telling everyone how it's done.

Think of it as a solution to a problem for which one can, if the solution is truly clever, receive a government granted monopoly on the solution for a period of time.

What we have now is that any solution, no matter how obvious or trivial, is being granted the same monopoly protection as if it were really unique.

It's like giving a class a test in which the first person to solve the problem by some method gets an 'A' and the rest using the same method are given 'F's. The question is whether that problem is sufficiently difficult that the other students would have been able to arrive at the same solution without copying the solution of the first to solve the problem.

If the other students could have only solved the problem by copying that of the first, then the 'F's would be appropriate. But if the problem was such that every student satisfactorally solved the problem on his own, they should all receive 'A's.

In the United States, the ONLY valid argument for patents and copyrights are defined by the Constitution as: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries".

So the only question is: do software patents or copyrights "promote the progress of science and useful arts"? Anything else is irrelevent.

No offense, but do you really think the 250 year old efforts of our ancestors to flesh out a working government is the only practical way of doing things, or that it is even the best?

It's the only legally valid method of doing things in this country. If you want a different method our canny ancestors provided you with the ability to AMEND the Constitution, an effort which you can spearhead at any time.

If you aren't up to it, then obviously the law isn't important enough to change. And I think the 'prob

Well to begin with, patents are an imposition on freedom. You give someone a temporary and artificial monopoly in order to gain benefit to society. You don't have to justify why not give them patents, you have to show why you should. The benefits (at least in theory) are thus:

1) Companies have a greater incentive to innovate and create new products.2) Little guys don't get their inventions stolen.

Except that neither of these apply to software patents. Now, clearly, there's no shortage of innovation an

The issue here is changing the extent of the "something" that can qualify. If I create a novel equation, do I get a patent on it? If I create a novel sequence of thoughts, do I get a patent on it?

Pysical objects and physical processes may be inventions, may be patented.

As the US Supreme Court ruled in Parker v Flook, all algorithms/equaltions/calculations are to be considered to be familiar prior art for patent purposes. You cannot "invent" a new equation. The lower c

Because if I invent it myself completely independant of the patent and with no knowledge of the patented product, with the errant belief I'm the first to invent this, I will not be allowed to do anything with it.

With software the likelihood of this happening increases dramatically. In my opinion that's wrong.

If you create something really novel, even if it is in software, why *shouldn't* you be able to get a patent on it?

Because that is not what usually happens. Software patents are used as weapons to destroy competition, not as protection for true innovation. If patent holders would limit themselves to only truly innovative, non-trivial solutions I doubt anyone would care. As it is we (anyone making a living in software) are under constant threat because someone might take out a patent on some completely t

"I asked this [slashdot.org] in the previous patent discussion as well, but let me ask again: does anyone know of any "good" software patents? I.e. non-trivial, innovative, and realistic? The only one that came out of that previous discussion was the RSA patent, which I agree meets these criteria and as such is worthy of patent protection."

Please try and find another example - and preferably not one that is a direct assault on my freedom to study and communicate mathematics. As I have said before and elsew

Please understand I'm playing devil's advocate here: in order to make the statement that "all software patents are evil", we must prove that there are no software patents that are "good". Which is why I am asking for examples. There are many people, even here on slashdot, who think software patents are somehow good. Let them come up with concrete examples of such "good" patents.

I agree that the notion that some modes of thought are effectively illegal, especially when related to a field in which one striv

To add to the other excellent replies: Because software patents are too easy.

Unfortunately I have lost the link, but there was an interview with an ex MSFT who has setup a company with the express purpose of dealing, and profiting only from leasing out a large stable of patents. Yes he intended to hire software engineers, but they were never to actually produce anything tangible - other than a stream of patents.

Their method of 'work' was to, perhaps once a week or month, throw the engineers into a room, t

If you create something really novel, even if it is in software, why *shouldn't* you be able to get a patent on it?

If you create something really novel, even if it is a plot in a book, why *shouldn't* you be able to get a patent on it?

Can't you see how wonderful it would be if JRR Tolkien could be awarded a monopoly on writing about Dragons? Rowlings could get a monopoly on books with young wizards? Spielberg could patent films with dinosaurs? That would advance science and culture, wouldn't it? Why shou

If you create something really novel, even if it is in software, why *shouldn't* you be able to get a patent on it?

Because your program is already protected by copyright! Having both copyright & patent protection is double-dipping, IMO. You don't see Ford taking out copyrights on their trucks, and you don't see authors patenting books.

As far as I am concerned, software should either be protected by patents, or copyrights, but NOT both. And frankly I prefer copyrights.

...novel...
And here's the key word. Patents are supposed to describe something new and 'non-obvious'. But 99.9999(9)% of patents on software are utterly trivial and even any half-witted developer routinely produces simple algorithms that are blindingly obvious:

x = 2;
y = 'z';
print 'Eh? if x is not z;

is the sort of thing that springs to mind. But ISNOT is being patented.
Hardly novel or non-obvious. It doesn't contribute to the sum of human wealth and economy in any arguably sensible way that I ca

patents create property. property is wealth. patents like all property create wealth. the more varieties of property in society the greater the wealth that can be created. the better off society as a whole becomes. you only need to look at the US versus poorer countries. it is the enforcement of property rights that has created wide spread wealth.

Weapons create property. property is wealth. Weapons like all property create wealth. the more varieties of weapons in society the greater the wealth that can be created. the better off society as a whole becomes. you only need to look at the US versus poorer countries. it is the enforcement of others property rights that has created wide spread wealth.

"For example, electronic companies want to keep the same type of patent coverage for the next generation of their products (with more embedded code) as they are used to having. And what's wrong with that?"

A hardware idea simply re-implemented in software is not a new idea and not patentable.

A pure software algo is a mathematical discovery and not patentable. You cannot patent mathematics.

I think you misunderstood what the EU parliament did, the wording rules out pure data processing patents. It does not